I Have a New Job

July 13, 2013

My blogging has been either non-existent or sporadic for the last five weeks. The reason is that I have a new job. It has, shall we say, usurped most of my time and energy.

The first two weeks were the worst. I threw myself into learning new work procedures and more about programs I have been using for years and thought that I knew like the back of my hand. There was a great deal of scrambling around on my part, watching YouTube instructional videos at night and even paying a visit to my buddy the professor to ask a few questions about Photoshop. Repeatedly, during those first two weeks, I was given jobs I had no idea of how to do. I felt like I was the main character in a Kafka story, or better yet, the accountant in the play The Actor’s Nightmare. It’s about a guy who wakes up on stage, in a play, with actors trying to interact with him, but he knows none of the lines. As a result, I’ve learned a great deal and have found the whole experience quite rewarding.

I am a contractor at this job. Those of you out there who are contractors, and hope one day to be hired as an actual employee, I think you’ll appreciate this analogy. It’s like trying out for a part in a movie, but the audition goes on, and on, and on, and…

I try to keep my nose epoxied industriously to my monitor and I keep interaction with my fellow workers to a minimum. I wish to be perceived only as a hard worker and a serious candidate for a potential full-time employee position. So I try to keep my conversations as short as possible.

This has led to a new and frustrating experience for me. The young digital video guru I sit next to brought up the old TV series The Rifleman. He was talking to a photographer, who was close to his age, and was only getting blank looks. “Come on,” the young man said, “you’ve never seen reruns of that old show? It’s about a guy with a modified Winchester rifle…” He held his hands out, as if he were holding an imaginary modified 1892 Winchester,.40-40 caliber, with a 20 inch barrel. Then, with a sigh, he let his hands, and the subject, drop. I took a breath and continued to focus on my work. For the first time in my life, I did not join in a conversation about a classic TV western. For those who have read some of my early posts, you know that I dig old TV shows, especially westerns.

In an alternative universe, this is what I would have interjected when the young digital video artist mentioned The Rifleman…

“…Ah, yes, one of the absolute best of the half-hour westerns. Staring the great Chuck Connors as Lucas McCain, and Johnny Crawford as his son Mark. And let’s not forget veteran character actor Paul Fix who played Sheriff Micah Torrance. Never in the history of TV, then or since, has the deep and abiding love between father and son been depicted with such genuine emotion and sincerity…and the rifle was pretty cool, huh?…”

That’s what I would have said…or something to that effect. I couldn’t do that then, but I can do it here.